"I do not know how long this struggle might have lasted if a strange episode had not occurred, which decided it to my great astonishment quickly in my favor.
"While I was yet kneeling at Leonora's side, I suddenly heard somebody say behind me: '_Mais vraiment, c'est superbe!_' I rose, full of horror. Before me stood a young man elegantly dressed, who examined me through his eye-glass from head to foot and back again, and then repeated: '_Superbe! mademoiselle_, I congratulate you on this new conquest.'
"The young man was one of Leonora's friends, whose lavish liberality had procured for him the privilege of being looked upon by her as her only lover. He knew that Leonora was by no means rigorously faithful to him, and did not mind it much; but he did not like to meet his rivals at her house, which he had furnished at his own expense, and with princely magnificence.
"'I beg you will explain this scene, mademoiselle, he said, turning to Leonora, in a tone of insulting indifference, which drove all the blood from my cheeks to the heart.
"I was opening my lips to give him an insulting answer, when Leonora anticipated me. As soon as she had seen the new comer she had risen, and stood now, pushing me gently back, between him and myself.
"'This gentleman,' she said, pointing at me, 'has a right to be here.'
"'What right?'
"'The right of one who has been unfortunate enough to love me once.'
"'Ah, mademoiselle,' replied the young man, smiling ironically, 'the gentleman shares that misfortune with many others.'
"'Sir,' said I, 'whatever claims you may have upon mademoiselle, I have older claims, and I cannot allow you to insult a lady to whom I was once engaged in my presence.'
"'Ah,' said the young man; 'you were engaged to mademoiselle. It is not possible! and now, I dare say, you propose to marry her, after I'--with a glance at the furniture--'have had the folly to provide mademoiselle with a trousseau. Very well conceived, upon my word!'
"'Stop, sir!' cried Leonora, rising to her full height, 'enough has been said. You think you can control me, and insult me, because I have accepted your presents. Here, I return you all you have ever given me.
There, and there, and there!' and she tore with feverish excitement the gold bracelets and all the jewels she wore from her and threw them at the feet of the young man.
"The passion with which she did this was too deep to be for a moment misinterpreted, and evidently made a great impression upon the dandy.
'I have had enough of this.' he said. 'I shall see you again, mademoiselle, here is my card, sir!' and he hastened to leave the room.
"'Come! come!' cried Leonora; 'not another moment will I stay here.
Rather at the bottom of the Seine than here!'
"'I took her at her word. I begged her to change her dress while I wrote in her name a few lines to the Marquis de Saintonges--this was the name of Leonora's lover--and placed the lodging, which he had rented for Leonora, and everything he had ever given her, once more at his disposal. We left the house, handed the keys to the porter, and gave the letter into the hands of a messenger, who promised to deliver it immediately, and a few hours afterwards I had settled all my affairs, said farewell to my friends, and the city was several miles behind us.
"Our journey was for the present not to be a very long one. A few stations beyond Paris, Leonora became so unwell, we had to stop in a little town. The physician who was called in was fortunately an able man, and told me that mademoiselle, my sister (for such Leonora appeared to be), was threatened with inflammation of the brain. His diagnosis was unfortunately but too correct. The very next day the terrible disease showed itself clearly. The poor sufferer raved in her delirium of the hot orgies in the _Jardin aux Lilas_ and of the cool shades in her native woods, of the Marquis de Saintonges, and other Paris acquaintances, and of myself, now appearing as her guardian angel, and now as an avenging demon, while I sat by her bedside and meditated on our strange position. During my eager pursuit of Leonora I had followed rather a blind impulse than very clear motives, and never, in all my dreams, had it occurred to me that we might be placed in a situation like that in which I now found myself. But amid all my troubles one thought rose high above all doubt: I must never again quit Leonora, if she should recover.
"After a little while symptoms appeared which gave us hope, and one fine morning the physician brought me the news that a crisis had taken place in the disease, and that Leonora was for the present out of danger. 'Nevertheless,' he added, with a very serious expression, 'I must not conceal it from you that, according to human calculations, your sister is not destined to survive this attack very long. I apprehend that her lungs are seriously affected; she must have been ill a long time before I saw her. I do not know your circumstances, and cannot tell, therefore, whether you will be able to follow my advice.
My advice is this: Go with your sister to a southern climate--to Italy; if you can, to Egypt. In a less genial climate mademoiselle would succumb in a very short time.'
"My resolution was instantly formed. I had nothing more to win and nothing to lose in Germany, where my political cure was to be completed by a prohibition to teach publicly during the next five years. My means had been nearly consumed during my long wanderings; there was only a small remnant left, but I might spend that sum just as well in Italy as elsewhere; besides, I hoped to derive abroad some advantages from my knowledge of languages; and, finally, I had no choice. I would have rather endured extreme suffering than to omit doing anything that could benefit Leonora. A few days later we were on our way to Italy.
"I settled down a few miles from Genoa, upon the coast of the glorious Mediterranean. I was fortunate enough to obtain a few lessons in the family of a rich Englishman, who had come to the place for the same reasons which brought me there, and thus I was relieved of all anxiety on the score of money. All the greater was my anxiety for Leonora.
"Our flight from Paris had been so sudden, and was for Leonora so entirely the result of a momentary impulse--her sickness, following immediately afterwards, had so completely broken down all her energies that she had willingly acceded to all my arrangements, and was only now coming to a clear understanding of our situation--I had not thought of it at first, and became aware of it only now through Leonora's manner towards me--that in this dependence on a man whom she had shamefully betrayed, and in the constant company of him before whom she would have loved to hide herself in the lowest depth, she suffered probably the severest punishment that could have been inflicted upon a person in whom the last spark of honor and self-respect was not extinguished.
Leonora did not hesitate to say so; but she added, 'the punishment is severe but just; it was the only way, perhaps, to teach me how grievously I had sinned against you.' While Leonora found thus a soothing comfort for her conscience in her deep repentance, I had in my unspeakable sorrow only one very modest consolation: to act towards Leonora as my conscience dictated. I was at liberty to drain the cup of sorrow to the very last drop. That was the fulfilment of all the precious happiness of which I had dreamt so much in the golden days of Fichtenau, and even later in the dark nights of my imprisonment in the fortress! This pale, feeble form--that walked slowly along the sea-coast in the evening sunlight, hanging on my arm and never lifting up the weary head--she by whose sick-bed I sat watching day after day, when sickness confined her in her room, and in whose broken heart it had become my duty to pour soothing balm, of which I stood so much in need myself--this was the girl whom I had chosen to be my wife, and in whom I had worshipped, full of bright hopes, the mother of my children.
Oh, Oswald! Oswald! the most fanatical optimist might have been appalled--the most orthodox soul might have been led to doubt if there were not after all a great deal of truth in Voltaire's assertion, that life was nothing but a _mauvaise plaisanterie_.
"And yet it was good for me to pass through this trial also. It was a bitter medicine; but it cured me thoroughly of that disease which others call joy of existence and pleasure in life.
"Leonora's humility in bearing her sufferings put me altogether to shame. In proportion as the disease was destroying her bodily form, the original beauty of her soul began to reappear. She had led a sinful life; when she died, she died like a saint.
"It was late in the evening. I had carried the poor sufferer, who was specially excited on that day, and anxiously yearned after air and light, in my own arms from the fisherman's cottage which we occupied, to the edge of the black basaltic rocks which here hang over the sea.
She was resting on a couch formed of cushions. The sun was setting in resplendent magnificence, and just sinking into the sea. Not a breath stirred the smooth surface of the waters, and the emerald and golden lights which shone in the sky were purely and calmly reflected below, as in a mirror. Upon the pale face of the patient also fell an enchanting sheen--a rosy lie--the lie with which the sun and life scoff at the night and at death. And in that hour Leonora took leave of the sun and of life. She told me that she had always loved me, even at that moment when vanity and folly had blinded her; that her whole life since that day had been but a continuous effort to drown her remorse. She did not desire to live, even if it were possible that I should ever love her again. She felt herself to be unworthy of being my slave, much more so of being my wife. She was shuddering at the mere thought. 'Oh never, never more,' she continued, and her beautiful eyes shone with a supernatural fire, 'never upon this earth, where I have so tearfully sinned against you. But when this desecrated body has crumbled into dust, and the soul has been freed from the fetters that bound it to the dust, then I will hover around you, I will wait for you; and when you come, your soul will kiss my soul, and by that kiss I shall know that all has been atoned for, that all is forgotten and forgiven.'
"I told her that I had long since forgiven her fully, and that I now loved her with a purer and holier love than in the days of our happiness.
"I kissed, weeping, her white hands and her pale lips.
"'This is our wedding-day,' she whispered--'poor, poor man.' She sank back upon the cushions.
"I carried her, quite exhausted, back to the cottage and to her bed.
"It was the last time.
"That night Leonora died."
Berger had risen, and Oswald had followed his example. The former was entirely filled with the recollections which had just passed before his mind's eye, clothed by his powerful imagination with all the accuracy and clearness of reality; the latter thought of nothing but what he had just heard; and thus both hardly noticed the road which led them gradually higher and higher through the dark pine forests.
Thus they found themselves suddenly upon the bare top of the mountain, which the people of the neighborhood call the Lookout, and which is by far the highest all around among all the brothers and sisters.
The sun had set, but the western sky was still glowing in all the splendor of the evening glory, and a faint reflex gave even to the eastern horizon a faint, rosy tinge. Here and there one of the higher mountain-tops, steeped in purple, looked after the parting light of the day; but the larger valleys were already filled with gray shadows of the evening, and whitish mists floated in the narrower glens. The pine-trees, whose heads rose from below to a level with the travellers'
feet, stood calm and rigid, like a breathless multitude in anxious expectation.
Berger gazed into the glow of the setting sun, resting on his stick, and watching it as every instant some tinge vanished and another turned pale. Oswald's eye hung upon his features, which seemed every moment to become more and more spiritual. Was it the effect of the ghastly light, or merely the expression of what was going on within? Suddenly Berger dropped his cane, spread out his hands as if in prayer, and said: "Mother Night, all-powerful original Night, from whose bosom the creature tears itself away in mad desire to live, only in order to return after long wanderings, penitent and humiliated, to your faithful maternal heart, I hail you, even in this faint, earthly image! Yon bottomless bourn of oblivion, yon sweet cradle of unbroken rest, how I long for you with my whole heart! Oh, take it from me, this intolerable burden of life; spare me the daily returning grief to open these weary eyes to a light which they hate; take from me this remnant of dust, which weighs me down with its sinfulness, and which becomes only the more painful as it daily dwindles away! Let it, oh, let it quickly be consumed! I know I could quickly come to you if I but took a single step beyond the edge of this rock; but even if my bones were broken into atoms below, my soul would find no rest, for it has still a few drops left in the cup of life; perhaps--who can tell?--the very bitterest of them all. No! no! get thee away from me, Satan, who allurest me down into the abyss! The abyss is not death; life in all its splendor, is true death. I know thy old tricks; thou didst try them with the carpenter's son of Nazareth! But he rebuked thee and thy temptations--honor, power, and the favor of women--all he rejected, in order to hunger, to thirst, and not to have where he might lay his head, to wash off the last remnant of earthly life in the bloody sweat of the night on the Mount of Olives, and in order to die the death of a murderer on the cross at Golgotha! Oh that I could go forth into all the world, to preach the word, the sacred word, that frees us now and forever--the word that leads us back again to our good, mild, dear Mother Night, whom we have left in order to suffer infernal punishment in the bright sun-glow of life, while our tongue is parched and our temples are beating! The word, the holy, mysterious word, which has become a mere mummery, a derision, and a mockery, in the vain show with which they fancy they serve their God. Forgive them, oh Mother, for they know not what they do; they would willingly come to you if they had but ears to hear your sweet voice, and eyes to see your mild beauty. I can see your holy face; its smile fills me with hope and comfort. I can hear your voice; it whispers, 'wait, wait but a little while, and you shall sink back into my faithful arms, back to eternal peace.'"
The rosy hues had vanished from the sky; gray twilight was spreading over the valleys, and the evening breeze began to whisper and to murmur in the tops of the pine-trees.
Oswald was seized with vague terror. He felt as if that mystical Night, which Berger had invoked in his strange prayer, was chilling him already with a breath from the grave--as if the sun had set never to rise again But this fear was not without a strange admixture of delight. The narcotic fragrance of thoughts of death which had been borne to him on Berger's ecstatic words, filled his heart, together with the perfume of the heather and the aroma of the pines.
He thought of Helen and of Melitta, but not with the restless anxiety of the morning, but in calm melancholy, as we think of the departed whom we have loved. He thought of the troubles and blunders of his gay drama in the chateau of Grenwitz, but it looked to him like a puppet-show for children. He thought of the future, but it had no longer any charms for him; it filled him neither with hope nor with fear; it was as if his whole life were withdrawing from without, as if the world were not worthy of so much love or so much hatred.
Thus he sat, resting his head on his hands, upon a large rock, and looked out into the evening, which was spreading its dark wings wider and wider over the heavens.
A hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Come!" said Berger, "let us return to the dead!"
They descended from the summit and plunged into the damp darkness of the forest. Berger seemed to know every path and every stone in the mountains. He went on, supporting himself every now and then with his stout cane, at a pace which made it difficult for Oswald to follow him, though he was considered a good pedestrian.
Thus they had reached a meadow lying in the very heart of the forest.
As they followed the edge of the wood they suddenly saw a light glimmering on the opposite side. It came from the flame of a pile of briars which had just been kindled. Within the bright circle of the flames two persons were visible--a woman, as it seemed, and a child.
Oswald's sharp eyes confirmed him in a suspicion which had entered his heart at the first glance.
They were Xenobia and Czika.
He hastened as fast as he could across the meadow towards the fire, but he had hardly accomplished half the distance when he sank up to his ankles into the morass. He saw that he could not go any further. He cried as loud as he could: "Xenobia! Czika! it is I! Oswald!"
But his call had scarcely broken the peace of the silent forest when the fire vanished, and with the fire the two forms he had seen.